I’m High On It / Bionic is a solo dance/performance work exploring vulnerability, fragility and chronic illness.

The work responds to Bundoora Homestead’s site as a former home for the mentally ill, where bipolar research was conducted and where the drug ‘lithium’ was rediscovered as bipolar medication. Here, I turn to look at my own experience of bipolar disorder alongside several other chronic illnesses whichexist in comorbidity; affecting and re-affecting each other in a slippery state of tangibility. Through song, voice and improvised dance and movement, I create a collection of voice and body vignettes playing with the cracks and fragments of palpability and perceptibility in my understanding of self and other. I’m high on it / bionic evokes ideas of being ‘part-human’, the other part artificial or synthetic: the copious pharmaceuticals and assistive tools required to operate the various parts of my body that do not function efficiently or correctly, and whose fragility continues to spill out and affect other systems.

Created and performed by: Ebony Muller

Technical support by: Shelley O’Meara

Photography: Michaela Bear

Presented as part of A Fragile Beauty, exhibition curated by Michaela Bear for Bundoora Homestead, November 2022.

Supported by Lucy Guerin Inc through the Make a Start Residency program.

Performed on the lands of the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nation.